South Carolina adds 85 deaths to toll, 2,300 new COVID-19 cases

Andrew Caplan
·2 min read

South Carolina reported more than 2,300 new COVID-19 cases and 85 more deaths on Wednesday, according to the state Department of Health and Environmental Control.

At least 304 people have died from COVID over the past five days in South Carolina. Tuesday’s death toll surpassed the previous three days combined. Since the start of the pandemic last year, 11,913 people have died from the disease.

DHEC said the 2,327 new cases reported Wednesday came from testing completed two days earlier. That brings the state’s COVID-19 case count to nearly 835,000, according to DHEC.

Of the new cases reported on Wednesday, 728 were considered “probable” rather than confirmed.

The state conducted 17,849 COVID-19 tests, with 13.8% coming back positive.

At least 43.7% of the new cases reported Wednesday were people aged 30 and under.

Children 10 and younger made up 12.6% of the new cases on Wednesday, while 17% of the cases were diagnosed in people between the ages of 11 and 20.

At the earlier height of the pandemic between December and February, only 5.8% of positive cases were kids 10 and under.

The Palmetto State continues to trend in the wrong direction, as cases are soaring.

Two weeks ago, South Carolina had its second-highest weekly total of new cases with nearly 38,000. The previous week, there were more than 35,000 new cases. The only higher weekly total was in early January, when the state had more than 40,000 cases. The state hasn’t had fewer than 1,000 new cases on any day since July 24.

The highly contagious delta variant is likely responsible for the majority of new COVID-19 cases in South Carolina, according to state health officials. The exact number of delta cases is unknown because only a fraction of confirmed cases undergo genome sequencing, the process to determine the variant.

There have been 215 deaths — 0.01% of all cases — as of Sept. 17 from “breakthrough” cases, meaning the person was fully vaccinated. The majority of deaths — 65% — are people ages 71 and up. About 65% of those who died had comorbid conditions. And 0.42% of all fully vaccinated people have been infected, while just 0.0361% of fully vaccinated people have been hospitalized.

Health officials recommend wearing a face mask and getting the coronavirus vaccine to help limit the spread of the virus. South Carolina’s vaccination rate is 50.9%, among the lowest in the country.